Why Longitudinal Psilocybin Research is Key to Understanding its Long-Term Effects

If it's one thing that I absolutely love in research it's a solid longitudinal study due to the increases in reliability over an extended period of time, concentrating on lasting effects. Changes in mental health or symptoms are demonstrated through both research designs, however given time and fevelopment there are so many things within someone's life and biochemistry that can ultimately change the result positively or negatively.

Go figure, here's where I start talking about psilocybin again. In my personal experience with both micro-dosing and hero doses (3.5g<*), there were changes immediately in cognition and perception, however the biggest changes I felt came with the coming weeks and months with deeper aspects of my mental health. Obviously I wasn't tracking myself through an empirical study and even then I'd be demonstrating researcher bias to the maximum extent, but I am uncovering more and more studies demonstrating the positivity of psilocybin both short term and longitudinally.

This week's study that I came across tracked participants with naturalistic psilocybin use after one dose of 3.1 grams of dried mushrooms with 5 follow-up surveys. The hypothesis of the researchers was in line with exactly what you'd figure them to be; with greater absorption and state of surrender directly related to greater mystical effects within the participants. Furthermore, being able to define specific demographics and psilocybin, assess changes in mental health, physical well-being, and overall psychological functioning, and look at relationships between individual mindset prior to use/during/and after and uniquely the setting in which the dose is administered in were all focuses. This is where a longitudional study will really show what psilocybin is capable of and the lasting changes that it can bring about.

In any study focusing on psychopharmacology, there is always minority of the research population that experienced persisting negative symptoms and this study was no different with psilocybin (depression, anxiety); but overwhelmingly participants experienced a reduction in anxiety, depression, substance misuse, cognitive flexibility, emotional regulation, spiritual wellbeing, extraversion and a reduction in neuroticism/burnout. I'd love to take this study one step further and look at what are the effects after a one time dose of 3.1 grams coupled with a three month follow up with low dose micro-dosing (.1g>*).

This is where psilocybin departs from traditional psychopharmacology, there are marked long lasting effects with minimal negative aspects, its not a modality that requires something else (pharmacologically speaking) to deepen it's effectiveness and activation (see the constant bombardment of drug commercials on primetime TV that state when 'x' is taken with 'y' it bolsters its effectiveness). We keep seeing consistency with the broad clinical application of psilocybin to a myriad of treatments and this longitudinal study continues to back it up. What I have always been concerned with as a clinician and researcher are the lasting effects of a pharmacological treatment modality; with so many medications the fact of the matter is that we can't infer results across a population longitudinally like psilocybin has started demonstrating. It's becoming a brave new world that we the people are in charge of.

I feel the overall hesitation with psilocybin comes out of the fear of loss of profit from major worldwide drug companies. Ok, so you find out that you can get the same effects with them lasting much longer than traditional medication? Why would you continue to put synthesized chemicals (with no long term data) into your body when you have the choice to ingest something natural with just as much (with minimal side effects), if not more positive data behind it? One answer is the propaganda that has been associated with psilocybin, and it's purely that, antiquated propaganda. We haven't been fed data as a population, we have been fed what we must believe with little to no thought available to us as to what decision to make for what is best for us. Part of the reason the public is so horrible with consuming real data. Individual freedom has been taken away all the way down to what we deem as the best for us in the name of company making profit.

So like so many arenas of life we are purely driven by profit, the postulation that what is profitable is the best thing for us. I still remember when the US Government found out that THC has medicinal benefit after denying it for decades and then all of a sudden Marinol (synthetic THC) was developed. I fear we are on the same trajectory with psilocybin; the moment there is a significant amount of research demonstrating positive effects a synthetic varaint will be manufactured in turn making it the only legal option with one company reaping the profits and the public laden with the diminished effects of the synthetic counterpart.

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